My dash beeped, and I accepted the communication from Killer. Varn’s face appeared. “Hawk, I don’t like this. Where are they?”
“We’re about to find out. Probes have been deployed. Sit tight, and we’ll wait for word,” I told him.
“Fine. Someone wake me up when the fun starts.” He was gone.
R11 buzzed from his seat, and I checked over my shoulder to find him working on his computer.
“R11, what’s that?” I asked the robot.
“I’m getting a message, Captain,” he said.
We jumped from our seats, scrambling over to him. Nothing on screen indicated a communication. “I don’t see it?” Jade asked.
“Not there.” He tapped his head. “Here.”
“They’re sending you a direct message?” Luther’s brow furrowed as he inspected R11, like he might pull the information from the robot if he concentrated enough.
“What’s it say?” Jade whispered.
“It’s binary.” R11’s eyes dimmed. “They’re robotic. They used this method, because it cannot be intercepted.”
“Robots?” I peered at the viewscreen, finding it was still devoid of anything but space and the distant planets.
R11’s eyes pulsed, and he went rigid. “The Velibar have come.”
Luther’s dash blared an alarm, and he rushed over to it. “He’s right. Probes are relaying it now.”
He pushed the image to Pilgrim’s central viewscreen, and it showed five Squids advancing to Refuge. Their red tentacles thrashed angrily.
“Is it a trap?” I asked R11.
“No, Captain. Refuge was a safe zone. But it’s been compromised,” R11 responded.
“What do we do?” Jade nervously shifted her stance.
The alarms changed, and the blinking lights appeared on the radar. Seven bogeys materialized on screen.
“We have company,” Luther bellowed. “Flyers. The Velibar have spotted us.”
“Game time.” I rushed to my seat, strapping in. I tapped the comm link and sent Varn a message. “Just like the trials at home, Wallish.”
His voice was tense but arrogant. “Best of seven. See you soon, Hawk.”
If it was a contest Varn wanted, he’d get one. The flyers were coming in heavy. I doubted they had an idea what our Racers were capable of, so the element of surprise was on our side. We’d been training for weeks and had gone through several variations of exercises.
“We’re ready, Arlo.” Luther had already locked on a target, and that was who I went for.
I slowed the Racer, letting the flyer come closer. The simulations we’d practiced near the Moon were based on the flight patterns and reactions of the flyers we’d fought outside of Saturn. I hoped these Velibar had been trained in the same style as our predictions.
Luther fired at the exact second I punched the throttle, shoving the nose of the Racer to shoot us below the enemy. I arced around it as it screamed through empty space, and Luther pre-emptively shot. The flyer didn’t stand a chance. It crashed directly into the pulses, five of the eight blasts breaking down its shields, and subsequently its hull. The flyer exploded and drifted away in pieces. Varn shouted excitedly from his own cockpit, and I checked, finding he’d nailed one of the targets as well.
“One to one,” I whispered, dashing between two opponents. Luther expected this, and released two bombs at the precise moment. Their compact thrusters pushed them toward the flyer’s hulls, and they stuck. These devices were designed to be ignored by the Velibar shields. They worked like a charm.
“Now!” I shouted, and Luther detonated them. The pair of ships didn’t stand a chance.
Varn Wallish easily obliterated two more, tying the score. I was more worried about getting out of here alive than about bragging rights, but that didn’t mean I’d make it easy on Varn.
The last enemy retreated, racing toward Refuge and its waiting fleet.
“Varn, we can’t let this thing escape,” I told Killer’s pilot.
“I have an idea,” Varn said, and the communication went dark.
“What’s he up to?” Jade asked. A breath later, it was obvious. “He’s accessing his FTL drive.”
“If he leaves us here, I’ll kill him,” Luther grunted.
“You and me both.” I watched as the Sage Industries Racer vanished off my radar, only to appear a second later.
“He’s cutting the flyer off!” Jade sounded pleased with the action.
We were so focused on downing the seventh compact fighter, I didn’t see the other ten blinking lights approaching us until Varn shouted through the comms that he’d beaten me.
“Bogeys arriving,” I told them. “Ten more.” My hands gripped the controls, and beads of sweat formed on my forehead. This was getting too intense.
“Captain, do not fire on them,” R11 advised when Luther had the first targeted.
“Why not?”
“That isn’t the Velibar.” R11 sent the schematics of another craft to my dash, and I recognized it.
“That’s the ship I encountered before. When I traveled to Eris.” It was where all this mess had begun. Only the one I’d discovered had self-destructed when I’d tripped the proximity sensors.
“That’s correct, Captain. These are our allies,” R11 said. “They’d like us to follow them.”
The new spacecraft came into view: elegant curves and dark gray exterior. They were smaller than the Racers, but not by much.
“What do you say, guys? Ready to meet our new friends?” I asked.
“That’s what we came for.” Luther lowered his targeting system and huffed out a breath. “Let’s hope they have some answers for us.”
Our escorts flew ahead of our Racers and guided us to the second to last planet in the outer rim of the system. We went along with them, their ships refusing to communicate with us directly. Apparently, the Velibar had activated detectors that would pinpoint their position if they utilized our archaic messaging technology.
Jade seemed intrigued by the comments. R11 was at the top of his game, thrilled to be the intermediary.
Time passed as we flew through the system.
“Are they still speaking binary?” Jade asked him a full day later.
“That’s correct.” R11 tried to explain how their conversations occurred, and to my simple mind, it sounded like they were dumping information into his network. He sent binary commentary back, and that was
